


Dr. Watney, I Presume

by hitlikehammers



Category: The Martian (2015), The Martian - All Media Types
Genre: (Thank You Kindly), DOCTOR Mark Watney, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, M/M, Marriage, Post-Canon, Protective Chris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 06:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8737735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: Chris hadn’t meant to say it, of course he hadn’t. He never says it, never gives it voice any of the million and five times that it irks him, that it catches in his throat and pangs in his chest and boils in his belly because it’s fucking wrong.
Chris gets pretty damn defensive when it comes to people properly respecting and appreciating the man he loves.   (Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza, 1/25)





	

**Author's Note:**

> The first (belatedly posted) of the 25 Days/Fics of my Winter Gift Fic Extravaganza. For an off-Ao3 friend who I hope very much enjoys this defense of the doctoral degree ;) <3

“So.”

Chris says it before he can think twice of it. He hadn’t meant to, of course he hadn’t. He never says it, never gives it voice any of the million and five times that it irks him, that it catches in his throat and pangs in his chest and boils in his belly because it’s fucking _wrong_.

“So.” Mark echoes toneless, not paying attention to Chris flipping through the mail, but he pauses when Chris is silent for too many moments, goddamnit, Chris shouldn’t have said anything, shouldn’t have started it because now Mark’s looking at him, Mark’s studying him in that way that always knows something’s wrong, always finds a problem to solve because that’s who Mark is, that’s what saved Mark’s life and Chris’s heart and fuck all, it’s idiotic, it’s trivial, it’s—

Chris should have kept his goddamn mouth shut.

“I’m,” Chris clears his throat, shrugs and tosses the post—bills and junk mail, typical—to the table, with more force than is probably warranted but he only said anything because of what was written on the first letter, what was printed, black and white, and he wants it as far from him as he can place it without it being obvious, without giving _everything_ away as he tried to fumble through some kind of way to cover it all up, to make it all go away.

“Like, I mean, I guess I,” Chris stammers, and feels his face heat just a little; “what I, it’s—”

“Am I dying?”

Chris's heart stops still; the rest of him follows suit.

“What?” He barely croaks out. He feels cold.

“Like, maybe some Martian fuckery left over?” Mark asks, casual as anything as Chris quietly falls apart. “Delayed radiation poisoning? Genetic damage?”

“Stop.” And it’s a fucking crack, it’s a _hiss_ because Chris can’t stand there and listen to his nightmares laid bare like that; can’t handle second-guessing test results he ran and re-ran and then gave Mark an absurd amount of blowjobs to convince him to let Chris run them again. Chris can’t be there. Chris can’t go _back_ there.

Chris is in too deep; always has been. Chris cannot _lose_ Mark. 

“You’re babbling,” Mark declares, leveling his stare at Chris knowingly. “You only babble when there’s something you’re afraid of saying. And you’re the great Doctor Christopher Beck,” Mark smirks, and winks, and Chris’s racing pulse starts to change in tenor from fear to rage, because that’s what started it, right, that’s why the mail offended him and his mouth betrayed him in the first place. 

“So what the hell are _you_ afraid of?”

And Chris takes a deep, steadying breath, and lets his heart keep racing as long as it needs to, and just steps into Mark’s space and wraps him tight and kisses him hard because for all that irks Chris, for all that angers him, there’s only one thing he fears, and the proof that it’s not real is here, and warm, and true against his hands, against his chest, against his skin.

“Forget it,” Chris breathes against Mark’s mouth before he nips at the lower lip and then licks along the inside at the top, sighing against the swell until Mark shivers; until Mark doesn’t necessarily forget the issue, but at least puts it aside.

Which is enough, for now. More than.

________________

“The cheque, Mister Watney.”

The waiter thanks them and clears the last of their dessert plates as Mark thanks him and slips his card in the pocket without bothering to check the bill.

Chris frowns.

“You keep that up, your face’ll get stuck that way.”

Chris feels his frown morph toward a pout without his conscious permission.

“That’s scientifically inaccurate.”

Mark scrunches up his face. “ _You’re_ scientifically inaccurate.”

Chris snorts. “Fucking child.”

“You love me.” And Chris does. God, but he _does_.

And that’s why it’s hard. That’s why he gets upset. That’s why it’s a knife and a bitter pill and a thorn in his side and more because Chris fucking _loves_ him. 

“Plus, it’s my persistent juvenility that keeps me so perpetually imaginative and resilient.”

And _that_ is a knife and an ache altogether different, really; that is sweet relief and too many days feeling things that modern medicine could never explain in his bones, in his chest—too long left hollow, with a heart that wouldn’t quite beat, but was too goddamn stubborn to just give out.

It’s an ache that makes him warm, in the now, to have _this_.

“Imaginative,” Chris nods, and fights a smirk. “Like that stir fry last night?”

Mark, predictably, flicks a bread crumb at Chris’s face, because of course he doesn’t care that they’re in a five-star establishment—where they’re eating now, because “imaginative” is probably the nicest thing that could be said of that particular stir fr,y and Chris had thrown away any possible leftovers as soon as he got up that morning—and of course, Mark fucking hits his target, because he’s _Mark_. 

“Fuck off.”

Chris grins for a second, but only until Mark gets his card back with a _Thank you, Mister Watney_.

“Stop that.”

Chris startles from his frowning, this time, for Mark’s fingertip at the corner of his lip, and the awkward tapping of the corner of leather book now bereft of his credit card against Chris’s nose playfully. “It’s my turn.”

“We share an account,” Chris adds, thoughtless in the face of Mark’s playfulness, his charm, his…everything. 

“It’s a fucking _gesture_ , asshole,” Mark sticks out the tip of his tongue and winks as he makes to stand. “Get over it.”

Fuck, but Chris loves him. 

________________

“Mark, I want to thank you again for being here. A year and a half of these interviews, and I imagine you’re gritting your teeth through it by now, so I think we all _really_ appreciate your willingness and patience with just how impressive and inspirational you are. To all of us.”

The audience claps deafeningly, with plenty of whoops and whistles, and Chris just grins at Mark’s side and takes his hand because he can’t _not_ , he can’t help but soak in the love of this man that _he_ can’t imagine his life without, in the fact that the _world_ sees how Mark is singular, and wonderful, and worth every world, every loss, every breath and all the space with all its stars between.

“Look,” Mark quips with a wide, toothy grin that shines out its own fucking sun; “if I _ever_ start gritting my teeth in the face of that kind of applause? Smack me, ‘cause my mom raised me better than to be that ungrateful.”

The audience laughs, and Chris falls a little harder where he didn’t realise there was anywhere else left to fall.

“One last question,” the host says once the giggling has subsided, “and this one for Doctor Beck—”

“Chris.”

He says it before he can think twice of it. He hadn’t meant to. Because he never says it.

But it’s high time that changed.

“Chris,” the host corrects idly, without thought, and that’s wrong. That’s what’s been wrong, with all of it, for as long as Chris can recall. “I just wanted to—”

Chris won’t let it lie like that. He won’t. Not anymore.

“I mean, you should call me Chris, everyone should call me Chris,” he says, and he knows it sounds like random babble, but he’s never been the best with his words, and it doesn’t matter so long as it gets said, so long as it gets _known_ and people _see_.

“That’s very generous—”

“Unless you’re going to call Mark, Doctor Watney.”

The host pauses, gives a little tilt of the head, and Chris takes the opening, makes a shot.

 _Finally_.

“Because he’s a miracle, right? He’s a fucking modern marvel, a superhero. He _is_ impressive as all hell, and he inspires me every day.” And Chris glances at Mark, and Chris knows his eyes are full of hearts and stars and fucking rainbows but hell, it’s true. “For all sorts of reasons, in all sorts of ways.”

And he grabs Mark’s hand tight just to squeeze, just to keep hold.

“But he’s also brilliant,” Chris carries on as he strokes Mark’s knuckles, as he stares into those eyes still lovestruck, still foolish, still learning what it means to sound the depths of this feeling, even now. 

“He’s generous and he’s funny and he’s personable and maybe that makes everyone forget his Northwestern PhD, but the man survived, alone, on Mars. That’s a story for the ages. But it’s a story that only happened because Mark is,” and Chris swallows, and lets himself study the look of shock on Mark’s features—shock that never dulls the way he shines with a certain adoration that still weakens Chris’s knees; “Mark’s a _genius_.”

The silence that stretches in the after seems endless. Chris clears his throat a little awkwardly, but hell: a _lot_ proud.

“So call me Chris, and maybe, like, remember that Mark’s brain is as much a thing of beauty as the rest of him.” He gives Mark an appreciative once over, to a few snorts and titters from the audience, and he’s bold again; he’s full again, for the look of hunger and of joy that makes Mark’s eyes sparkle.

“Because I mean, as you’re all so quick to remind me, I _am_ a surgeon.”

“ _And_ my husband,” Mark chimes in, a little sickening, a little too adoring, and a little bit of everything Chris has ever asked for in this world, so Chris says, fuck national television, and gives in to the urge to kiss his husband’s lips, just quick enough, but _enough_.

“So yeah,” Chris says softly, warmly as he pulls back and grins. “I just so happen to be the singular authority on the topic.”

________________

“So.”

They’re home, lounging the morning away in bed, having crashed the night before after a flight that was too long and a day that felt supercharged and buzzing with something unnameable, after Chris’s outburst. Mark sits up, pushes the sheets down and leaves his bare chest on display to glow in the soft filtering sunlight Chris had been reading by as Mark turns and sits cross-legged to face Chris straight on while Chris, for his part, lets his books slip from his hands as he lets himself stare, just a little: only just long enough where it’s not blatantly obvious.

Though it’s probably still blatantly obvious.

“So,” Chris echoes back, not bothering to sit up and he’s grateful for it, honestly, because in the blink of an eye Mark’s grabbed his book, flung it to the floor and is straddling Chris in a way that lets Chris stare as much as he blatantly, shamelessly wants to.

“You getting all defensive,” Mark says, bracing hands on Chris’s chest as he lifts to roll his hips just so. “Praising my intellect.” 

“And everything else.”

Mark leans, and puts pressure on Chris’s groin enough to make his breath catch, just as Mark kisses, licks at his nipple enough to make Chris’s heart pound, enough to tease out a moan. 

“You deserve it, though. That’s all,” Chris gasps a little; needs Mark to know now that it’s all out in the open. “More than any of us.”

“Not more,” Mark protests, breath hot against Chris’s skin. “And it doesn’t bother me, you know.”

“It bothers _me_.”

“Obviously,” Mark smirks up at him.

“The man I love is probably the most amazing human being the world’s ever seen, and he _chose_ to marry me. Me, who just...knows how to spacewalk and cut into people.”

“Disappointing resume, Christopher. Truly.”

“You’ve just,” Chris lick his lips, caught between how much he feels in the words and how much he’s just trying to remain fully coherent with the way Mark’s breathing soft against the pebbled blush around Chris’s nipples like the complete and utter asshole that he is.

“You’ve earned any of it, all of it. You’re the best of us, of anything. Or anyone.”

Chris wants to be embarrassed, a little, for that much honesty this early in the morning, but fuck it. 

He can’t.

“Careful,” Mark teases, but it’s brimming with affection as he lets his tongue flick at the hard bud as he grins, drags his teeth across the skin. “Gonna give me an ego.”

“Pretty sure inflating the one you’ve got any further would make it explode,” Chris volleys back, but it’s too breathy to mean a whole hell of a lot.

“Which is why I said you’d give me one,” Mark says, nuzzling down the line of Chris’s sternum as he sprawls out against Chris’s body, splayed full as he works down, and down, and down. “Gonna need to start on another.”

Chris starts to laugh, but it’s lost when Mark props his chin on Chris’s stomach and just stares up, just looks until Chris’s pulse pumps hard for everything that _look_ holds; gives.

“It was kinda hot, by the way,” Mark says, scootching up and resting his ear against Chris’s side. “It was stupid of you, not to just _say_ it,” he chides softly. “That’s been your deal, hasn’t it? All that frowning over nothing, staring off into oblivion.”

“I’m a pensive person,” Chris protests, but it’s fruitless. He reaches out a hand and threads fingers through Mark’s hair.

“Oh yeah, sure,” Mark ribs him, but leans into Chris’s hand in his hair all the same. “You’re pensively thinking about food, right now.”

Chris opens his mouth to protest, but his stomach rumbles against Mark’s ear and Mark just laughs, kissing Chris’s hip and smiling up at Chris; the warmest, most perfect sight Chris has ever seen—every morning, he’s the warmest, most perfect sight.

“But you’re _my_ pensive person,” Mark sits up and kisses Chris long and hard, sweet in a way that leaves Chris breathless when Mark murmurs hot against his lips: “ _Doctor_ Beck.”

“And _you’re_ the only doctor _I’ve_ ever needed, Mark Watney,” Chris says with a saccharine grin, catching Mark’s lower lip between his teeth to pull him into another kiss.

“God, you’re corny,” Mark laughs, burying his face into Chris’s neck. “I love it.” And yeah. 

Yeah: _that’s_ it.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
